The only servers that are truly affected by the introduction of the freezone are the lesser known servers - like mine

I agree though, that team servers shouldn't really be affected by this. If there has been a team with a dedicated forum, with members that know their teams servers and so on, they should always be as populated as before - the only barrier I can see is that these teams haven't taken the time to update their forums with the relevant info such as how to still gain access to the servers.

So you clan leaders out there, please stop complaining about this and focus your attentions in helping your clan members race on your servers by providing as much info as you can on your sites/forums.

I love your irony
Well, freezone is not better than free game of course, but why do people find that it is their right that the game is free and without limitations?
In Holland we say "never look a given horse in the mouth", meaning, don't complain when you get something for free, take it as it comes.

An old player signing in. Been playing since this came out. Cant remember my login or name though.

Used to love the game and wanted to try it again after 1+ years. It was promised to be free. It was SUPPORTED by adds for so long that the money was made for the purchases. The servers are for the most part hosted by the community.
And now this crap comes along.

I believe truly that the intentions are more sinister than what they let on. It's not only a way to milk money. As you have seen traffic is going down on servers and people are either quiting or buying the game but not in large enough numbers.
The freezone introduces people to the game but not the community.

This runs the risk (or if such is the intention) to ruin the reason to play Track Mania United/Nations and instead play Trackmania 2 when it comes out.

If the game was free new users might not even switch to Trackmania 2 and the community would've been alive and kicking. Just like Counter Strike 1.6 is still more popular than CSS so would Trackmania 1 be more popular than Trackmania 2.

After all e-sports, the community and various add-corporations have done for this company I believe this freezone thing was far to low to sink.

I'm sure not to buy any of your products for quite some time because of this.

Jackel wrote:only thing that can be suggested is look for TM2 when it comes out.

this game popularity has gone downthe drain with the creation of the freezone servers.

Stark Senape wrote:An old player signing in. Been playing since this came out. Cant remember my login or name though.

Used to love the game and wanted to try it again after 1+ years. It was promised to be free. It was SUPPORTED by adds for so long that the money was made for the purchases. The servers are for the most part hosted by the community.
And now this crap comes along.

I believe truly that the intentions are more sinister than what they let on. It's not only a way to milk money. As you have seen traffic is going down on servers and people are either quiting or buying the game but not in large enough numbers.
The freezone introduces people to the game but not the community.

This runs the risk (or if such is the intention) to ruin the reason to play Track Mania United/Nations and instead play Trackmania 2 when it comes out.

If the game was free new users might not even switch to Trackmania 2 and the community would've been alive and kicking. Just like Counter Strike 1.6 is still more popular than CSS so would Trackmania 1 be more popular than Trackmania 2.

After all e-sports, the community and various add-corporations have done for this company I believe this freezone thing was far to low to sink.

I'm sure not to buy any of your products for quite some time because of this.

that's a decent theory you're making there :/ as a big esports fan myself i really do hope that the legacy that has been created over the years for Nations wont be harmed because of TM2/freezone. i can just speak for myself but there's really no indications that i personally will switch over. ill try out TM2, but i will most likely only play it as a casual game, and i think other esports involved people will do the same. time will tell what intentions Nadeo/Ubisoft will have i suppose. but if you are right, i think they are perhaps a bit too naive in thinking everyone will just switch over just like that. it seems like many fail to realize that Trackmania is really a divided community, and that we like different things. the United crowd sees Nations as a demo/part of a full game. while the Nations/esports crowd - such as I - see Nations as the main game, and the other United envs as bonus material. TM2 seems directed to the United crowd to me.

Freezone is the worst thing ever ... i mean ... Nadeo forces with this decision peoples to buy United and the "normal" serverowners must set up a Freezone to have peoples on thier Server ... exept those who have the server already in the favorites.
Many peoples i know just stopped to play the game because of this ... and i promise ... more will follow when Nadeo dont find another solution ...

Please Nadeo ... dont give up find a solution and keep the community together ...

Well it's now middle of June 2011, and well is it 6-7 months since the freezone was forced upon us. What has changed, well a lot of private servers have closed down because nobody goes to them anymore. We, the BR Clan, Have gone from 7 servers to One, again because nobody races on them anymore. A lot of our clan members have given the game away because they don't want to race on the Freezone servers and are not tech savie enough to search for the the other servers. And we are not alone in this, i have seen many other clans who also had several servers either close down all or most of there servers, for the same reason as us, and also loose members.
We went from having one of the biggest member pools in Australia to having only about 5 active members now ( and a few of those are mumbling about leaving). So with all that in mind the freezone experiment was just a huge success......
TM2 was talked about Months and Months ago but still have not seen or heard about any confirmed release date. people are just not going to stick around forever, Nadeo are really going to have to do something big to get it's member base back anywhere near where it was and i think they are going to struggle.

Badwolf2 wrote:A lot of our clan members have given the game away because they don't want to race on the Freezone servers and are not tech savie enough to search for the the other servers.

Just don't see a problem here.
If they are in your clan you probably have a homepage or a forum?
Then it shouldn't be so hard to create a list with links to the different server, by using the addfavourite function and simply join the server. And if you have at least one person in your clan which has an united account, he should easily be able to get this login list together.

Badwolf2 wrote:TM2 was talked about Months and Months ago but still have not seen or heard about any confirmed release date. people are just not going to stick around forever, Nadeo are really going to have to do something big to get it's member base back anywhere near where it was and i think they are going to struggle.

To answer this
Don't panic, it's rolling

Hylis @7. Jun 2011 wrote:
And I go back to prepare the beta since we have work to do before the release in September
Cheers
Florent

@tcq
The point is though is that there is an issue, clans are closing down servers because nobody is driving on them anymore, and a lot more are sitting empty, which is good in a way I have a couple of servers i play on that were always full and so hard to get onto. Now though I can get on whenever I want, but it's damn lonely driving by myself.
Now don't get me wrong i'm looking forward to tm2, (should have been released last year or earlier), but there is an issue with the current setup or else people would not be having to close servers and people would still be driving on the servers.